Romney to Obama: If you want to change D.C. from the “outside,” we’ll give you the chance in November

posted at 8:23 pm on September 20, 2012 by Allahpundit

Via BuzzFeed, an easy lay-up after this afternoon’s embarrassing turnover. When I watched the clip of O, I thought in his fervor to shift blame to the GOP for his failures, he had stumbled into admitting that the entire premise of Hopenchange was naive crapola. (Telling Democrats “you were the change” at the convention was a more elegant means of blame-shifting.) But Jonah Goldberg makes a fair point:

His biggest lesson, meanwhile, is that “you can’t change Washington from the inside.” Wait a second. In the 2008 primaries, his whole argument with Hillary Clinton was over this exact question. She believed that you can change Washington from the inside and Barack Obama said you couldn’t.

For example, in a Nevada debate, Obama said he wasn’t a very organized person. But that didn’t matter because it was the president’s job to inspire people. The presidency “involves having a vision for where the country needs to go . . . and then being able to mobilize and inspire the American people to get behind that agenda for change.”…

Obama won that fight. But as president he conspicuously failed to inspire people, save for the tea parties who proceeded to drive a historic victory for the Republicans in 2010. For example, after over 50 speeches, statements and addresses on ObamaCare he never made it a popular piece of legislation.

And now he’s saying he had to learn an idea he never subscribed to was wrong. How introspective of him!

I never took O’s point in 2008 to be that Washington couldn’t be changed from the inside, period. I thought his point was that it couldn’t be changed from the inside by an insider, since an insider would already have been corrupted by the process. A Clinton could never be trusted to do it but Obama — allegedly an “outsider” — could. That was the whole point of the “Change You Can Believe In” slogan, I thought. Hillary was promising change too, but you can’t believe an old establishment hand like her who’s spent 15 years inside the Beltway. Better to trust a young Chicago machine politician who hadn’t achieved anything except a nice speech at the 2004 convention and winning a Senate race in a blue state against Alan Keyes. It was a populist rhetorical gimmick, designed naturally to play off liberals’ apprehensions about the Clinton machine. And of course, as Ace notes, it was opportunistic. Obama used to sing a different verse of the insider/outsider song:

“[Obama] wanted to marry and have children, and to have a stable income,” Kellman recalls.

But Obama was also worried about something else. He told Kellman that he feared community organizing would never allow him “to make major changes in poverty or discrimination.” To do that, he said, “you either had to be an elected official or be influential with elected officials.” In other words, Obama believed that his chosen profession was getting him nowhere, or at least not far enough. . . .

And so, Obama told Kellman, he had decided to leave community organizing and go to law school.

He had to become an insider so that he could run for president as an outsider and then discover that you can’t change Washington from the inside. Got it? Romney’s played this game too at times, once saying back in 2007, “I don’t think you change Washington from the inside. I think you change it from the outside.” All newbie candidates spout this platitude as a rejoinder to charges that they don’t have enough government experience. The difference with O is that “change” was less a promise in his case than the foundation of a messianic myth; to hear him admit that he’s learned hard lessons about how difficult it would be to achieve is like hearing FDR say in 1935, “Maybe Washington’s not ready for a New Deal after all.” Other presidents managed to change things from the inside, including his Great Society predecessor Lyndon Johnson. As Romney says, if he’s not up to the task, let’s him return him to the “outside” so he can work for “change” there.

Comments

Cue the music:

On the outside looking in (ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh)
Gotta find a way, gotta find a way back to your heart, dear, once again
Won’t you take me back again? I’ll be waiting here till thenOn the outside looking in (ah-ah-ah-ah-ah)

I don’t get all these stories with titles like “Why Romney isn’t dead yet”, “Why Romney still has a shot”, “Don’t count Romney out just yet”. Who the hell is counting him out except the usual suspects?

Obama can’t get to 50%, so he is the underdog, period!

ardenenoch on September 20, 2012 at 8:33 PM

I know right? Romney’s got this. People have to out and vote though, victory ain’t handed to you on a silver platter.

My black buds say they think he’s got the ‘slims’, their word for AIDs, noting his getting skinnier recently. They’ve long believed he’s gay and that the marriage with Moochelle a scam. His decision to support gay marriage and repealing DADT, only corroborates this, the way they see it.

He’s got nothing left for the debates. The Libyan terrorist killings finished off the foreign policy angle for the liberal debate moderators. “Tell us again, President Obama, how you personally killed bin Laden and brought peace to the Middle East.” Let’s review possible debate topics:

Hope and Change – he finished this off today.
Deficit – $16 trillion and counting.
Unemployment – 8% + for 4 years.
Closing Gitmo – not a good time to discuss that.
Foreign Policy – Libyan fiasco over a tape – yea, right.
Health Care – ObamaCare is so popular.
MediCare – stole how many billions from seniors?

What’s he got left? How do the moderators frame this to put this clown in a favorable light? Will some crisis cancel the debates?

The Obama camp is now very angry that Romney took the welfare queens agitator out of context, he is the content of Obama quote and it is much worse when put if full context just like the “you did not built that”…
Full quote: “The most important lesson I’ve learned is that you can’t change Washington from the inside. You can only change it from the outside. That’s how I got elected, and that’s how the big accomplishments like health care got done, was because we mobilized the American people to speak out.”

Yeah right… Mobilized the American people for Obamacare? This destructive law passed against the will of the people in the dark of the night by hook and crook… Obamacare was the ugliest of the ugly about Washington D.C Inside Politics and not caring about the will of the people… And yes they did mobilize the majority of the American people against it and hence the historic Republican victory in 2010 in the House of Representatives…

OMG, Barry actually had to answer a question about his performance in office! Sorry Barry, you can’t run for reelection as an “outsider.” It just doesn’t work. How about a new slogan: Change We Don’t Have A Clue About.

Of all the elections in my adult life, I’ve never exulted as much as I will when this laugh-a-minute billionaire embarrasment makes his concession call to the Kenyan Marxist who will save this country from under-educated and vastly over-weight shite brains whose invisible Guy in the Sky turned out to be insufficiently omniscient to equip them with a basic grasp of the distinction between “there,” “their” and “they’re.”

[Obama]will save this country from under-educated and vastly over-weight shite brains whose invisible Guy in the Sky

JackieB on September 21, 2012 at 1:59 AM

Seems you tried very hard to come up with a punchy, anti-Mitt comment, but what you delivered was a jumbled, incoherent mess. I’m surprised you admitted that Obama sees (non-Muslim) believers as obstacles to his vision for America’s future. So, I guess you deserve some points for honesty.

Anyway, they sure don’t make pro-Obama internet trolls like they used to. In recent weeks the pro-Obama commenter trolls (like JackieB) have seemed even less coherent and more unhinged and desperate than usual. It seems that they, too, sense the inevitability of Obama’s loss on November 6. After Obama loses, will these people continue to comment here? Will they just slink away and form online support groups for distraught worshipers of the former Pres. Obama?

Fortunately, a lot of Obama’s clueless worshipers still think Obama has this in the bag, and they don’t feel the same kind of urgency to show up on election day… which is fine by me. Romney will just win by an even bigger margin, AND we’ll have the added satisfaction of watching the Obama supporters’ epic meltdown on November 7.

Get your TiVo’s and other tv recorders ready. Election night coverage 2012 will be a beautiful night of television viewing.

The photo of Obama on Drudge is hilarious. Notice that the male interviewer drops his head to avoid seeing the leader of the free world squeeze his hand between his legs.

DrStock on September 20, 2012 at 9:39 PM

LOL. When I saw that photo, I thought: why is Barry cupping his b*lls? Is that the defensive posture he assumes when answering tough questions? Is that how he reacts at home, when Michelle demands to know if he took the last tamale?

Anyway, they sure don’t make pro-Obama internet trolls like they used to. In recent weeks the pro-Obama commenter trolls (like JackieB) have seemed even less coherent and more unhinged and desperate than usual.

You poor thing. You want to know, bluegill, how you know the polls are devastating for Romney. Hot air has gone *SILENT* on polling. There hasn’t been a “poll post” in days. They recognize the data is depressing and horrific.

You want to know, bluegill, how you know the polls are devastating for Romney. Hot air has gone *SILENT* on polling. There hasn’t been a “poll post” in days.

libfreeordie on September 21, 2012 at 8:17 AM

Hmmm, not sure where you’ve been. I see poll posts every day on here. Just going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you missed the endless HotAir poll coverage and not assume that you were being purposefully dishonest.

Anyway, the increasingly shrill tenor of the pro-Obama troll commenters on here reflects the fact that they know that Obama is heading for a defeat. The Bill Clinton speech bounce put the Obama campaign at its zenith last week, but that sure didn’t last.

I was there today dude. Romney had plenty of fire, but maybe he’s not “theatrical” enough for you. I had my fill of the kabuki theater the last 4 years, and I’m ready for an adult in the White House.

ornery_independent on September 21, 2012 at 12:55 AM

Maybe newtopia would be more excited if Romney campaigned wearing a cape or something. I mean it is hard to compete with a guy who has pirates into the Oval Office and spends time creating is own version of the American flag to replace the designation of the states with the campaign logo. How can Mitt match up with a guy who personally spoke to the pimp with a limp and slow-jammed his views on student loan reforms? In short, if newtopia is looking for the sock puppet show that is the Obama administration he/she will definitely be bored when the adults take charge and seek meaningful reform. Government administration and the legislative process are not meant to be exciting.

But that didn’t matter because it was the president’s job to inspire people. …save for the tea parties who proceeded to drive a historic victory for the Republicans in 2010.

I just figured it out! Obama is performing the greatest conservative troll job of all time! Act like the biggest progressive douche of a president to inspire Americans into a conservative revolution! Genius.

The Bill Clinton speech bounce put the Obama campaign at its zenith last week, but that sure didn’t last.

bluegill on September 21, 2012 at 8:27 AM

The fact that we’ve learned just how much the White House has lied to the American public about the attack at Benghazi didn’t help. It will be interesting to see what kind of a surrogate Clinton will be when he does the rounds of Sunday talk shows this weekend.

When you adjust these polls that are insanely oversampling the democrats then Romney is tied or ahead in most of them. Moreover over when you split the undecided 2:1 toward the challenger Romney as it is has been the historical pattern then Romney is certain to win enough of them to win the elections.

As I told you before it only takes a very tiny percentage of Obama “White Voters” from 2008 to swtich for Romney in 2012 combined with a very tiny percentage of Obama 2008 voters staying home in 2012 and Obama is certain to lose the elections. Below is the math for Romney victory in the following battleground states:

PA, MI, NV, MN, WI, NH, CO. Well what do you know, Obama wins the election.

libfreeordie on September 21, 2012 at 8:58 AM

Romney can certainly get Colorado and even media biased polls is showing him tied or slightly ahead there and once he gets he win the elections once you add the other states. I am confident that he will get either New Hampshire or Wisconsin (due to the Paul Ryan effect in Wisconsin) or both. I agree that it is a huge challenge to get Michigan and Pennsylvania. Nevada is a struggle too but Romney campaign seem to have more confidence in Nevada.

My prediction model depends on the percentage of Obama voters in 2008 who would stay home in 2012 and on the percentage of Obama “White Voters” in 2008 who would switch and vote for Romney in 2012. Let us be realistic the super vast majority of the switch voters from Obama 2008 to Romney 2012 are going to be from the White Voters…

You can change the numbers in cell “B2″ and cell “B3″ of the Excel sheet for each Battleground State and see what would be the result…

Have you noticed that the larger the poll sample of likely voters, i.e. the smaller the margin of error, the greater the Obama lead is. The Fox News polls had huge samples and show Obama handily winning in Ohio, Ras had Obama only at 1 point lead, but among a sample of 500.

Wow, this is the best you’ve got for a “gaffe” from the President? What’s the matter, tired of going back to 1998 to find stuff?

Mitt Romney called nearly half the country, including seniors, veterans and working people who don’t make enough to pay income taxes, moochers and freeloaders. He’s made his distain for the non-rich clear and unequivocal.

Have you noticed that the larger the poll sample of likely voters, i.e. the smaller the margin of error, the greater the Obama lead is. The Fox News polls had huge samples and show Obama handily winning in Ohio, Ras had Obama only at 1 point lead, but among a sample of 500.

libfreeordie on September 21, 2012 at 9:30 AM

And they are oversampling democrats by large margins even more than there actual 2008 numbers in these states… The game of oversampling democrats is not going to change the reality on the ground…

Mitt Romney called nearly half the country, including seniors, veterans and working people who don’t make enough to pay income taxes, moochers and freeloaders. He’s made his distain for the non-rich clear and unequivocal.

Let’s see whose statement has the most impact on the election.

chumpThreads on September 21, 2012 at 9:31 AM

No he did not call Seniors or Vets, because these people are still paying or paid enough taxes and both of these groups know that for sure he was not talking about them. In fact even for many of the people who are actually part of the 47% they really believe that they are part of the 53% and they agree with Romney that are far too many takers…

No he did not call Seniors or Vets, because these people are still paying or paid enough taxes and both of these groups know that for sure he was not talking about them. In fact even for many of the people who are actually part of the 47% they really believe that they are part of the 53% and they agree with Romney that are far too many takers…

mnjg on September 21, 2012 at 9:39 AM

Romney made no such distinction. Your apologist BS cannot undo what Romney said.

What Obama and his allies are doing now: “The Democrats want to convince [these anti-Obama voters] falsely that Romney will lose to discourage them from voting. So they lobby the pollsters to weight their surveys to emulate the 2008 Democrat-heavy models. They are lobbying them now to affect early voting. IVR (Interactive Voice Response) polls are heavily weighted. You can weight to whatever result you want. Some polls have included sizable segments of voters who say they are “not enthusiastic” to vote or non voters to dilute Republicans. Major pollsters have samples with Republican affiliation in the 20 to 30 percent range, at such low levels not seen since the 1960s in states like Virginia, Florida, North Carolina and which then place Obama ahead. The intended effect is to suppress Republican turnout through media polling bias. We’ll see a lot more of this. Then there’s the debate between calling off a random digit dial of phone exchanges vs a known sample of actual registered voters. Most polls favoring Obama are random and not off the actual voter list. That’s too expensive” for some pollsters.

That is from pollster John McLaughlin in an interview with Jim Geraghty from the National Review:

He was talking about the working age population and not the retirees. As I said Seniors know very well that he was not talking about them…

mnjg on September 21, 2012 at 9:46 AM

You’re officially nuts. He didn’t say “and I’m not talking about seniors or veterans here.” He was talking about 47% of the electorate. Is your claim that senior citizens are not part of the electorate?

You’re officially nuts. He didn’t say “and I’m not talking about seniors or veterans here.” He was talking about 47% of the electorate. Is your claim that senior citizens are not part of the electorate?

libfreeordie on September 21, 2012 at 9:51 AM

He was talking about who in the electorate who would never vote for him bit vote for Obama… Romney knows very well that Seniors vote more Republican than democrat so he was not talking about them… You are deluding yourself to think that he was talking about Seniors and that you are even deluding yourself more to think that Seniors believe that he was talking about them…

Can you post some evidence of the national sentiment of senior citizens and their reaction to those comments?

libfreeordie on September 21, 2012 at 9:52 AM

Can you? I think Gallup has a poll yesterday saying that 43% of the electorate said Romney statement had no effect on their vote, 36% said that they are less likely to vote for him, and 20% said they are more likely to vote for him… I am certain that 36% of those who are less likely not to vote for him based on statement were not going to vote for him to begin with…

I read the article. although I assumed left leaning pollsters skewed the results i nevery knew you could lobby them.

amazing

gerrym51 on September 21, 2012 at 9:55 AM

Yes the lobbying thing is not well know to the public but now more of us know it… Yes it is very disgusting.

The issue here that Obama and his media have nothing left to win except to try to demoralize the Republican/Conservative base… Their main weapon was BAIN CAPITAL and it failed badly… Then they tried Romney tax returns, Romney foreign bank accounts, Mediscare, Romney killed a man wife with cancer, Romney is a Felon, and it all failed badly… Now they are only left with demoralizing us via very skewed polls showing Obama winning coupled with lies that Romney campaign is in Chaos… This too is going to fail badly because on November 6 2012 we are going to vote in such larger numbers that were never seen before to defeat this communist in the White House…

If Obama and his media have any brains they would spend their money and enery on energizing their base that is much less energized than 2008 in particular the youth…

1. Many Obama voters are *not* part of the 47% who do not pay federal income tax. In fact, the GOP advantage on senior citizens makes it *more* likely that the GOP electorate will contain members of the 47%. So Mitt Romney clearly doesn’t understand *his own electorate.* Why would you connect support of Obama with not paying income tax when you have so many working class and senior citizen voters. Its the dumbest thing on earth.

2. But lets pretend for a moment that that all Obama supporters are part of the 47% (again insane), but here’s the problem: The GOP tends to win the senior vote, but they never win it 100%. So he was clearly talking about *some* senior citizens. No matter how you slice and dice it, when you go after the 47% of Americans who do not pay federal income tax you necessarily include senior citizens. Your inability to acknowledge that is frightening.

Even though what President Obama was saying meant that he believes it takes American citizens in collaboration with Washington to bring about change which is a very patriotic and wise thing to believe ,Romney might have scored a few cheap political points by reducing it to a misleading soundbite ,however Romney just looks crass and foolish since there is a video being shown showing Romney saying the exact same thing President Obama said …

He was talking about who in the electorate who would never vote for him bit vote for Obama… Romney knows very well that Seniors vote more Republican than democrat so he was not talking about them… You are deluding yourself to think that he was talking about Seniors and that you are even deluding yourself more to think that Seniors believe that he was talking about them…

mnjg on September 21, 2012 at 9:56 AM

libfreeordie asked the question: How does Romney reach the 47% figure by excluding seniors, vets, and working, low-income people?

Even though what President Obama was saying meant that he believes it takes American citizens in collaboration with Washington to bring about change which is a very patriotic and wise thing to believe ,Romney might have scored a few cheap political points by reducing it to a misleading soundbite ,however Romney just looks crass and foolish since there is a video being shown showing Romney saying the exact same thing President Obama said …

U2denver on September 21, 2012 at 10:11 AM

Full quote: “The most important lesson I’ve learned is that you can’t change Washington from the inside. You can only change it from the outside. That’s how I got elected, and that’s how the big accomplishments like health care got done, was because we mobilized the American people to speak out.”

Yeah right… Mobilized the American people for Obamacare? This destructive law passed against the will of the people in the dark of the night by hook and crook… Obamacare was the ugliest of the ugly about Washington D.C Inside Politics and not caring about the will of the people… And yes they did mobilize the majority of the American people against it and hence the historic Republican victory in 2010 in the House of Representatives…

Funny thing about this is that if you read the full quote ( two posts a above) it sounds like something you might hear at a Tea Party rally; real change comes from the votes and voices of the American people, not from the insular, inside-the-Beltway elite.

And, whether or not you agree with what he did, he does claim that things have been changed. He just, election year-style, to give the masses their due and maybe motivate them a little.

The good news is that nobody with importance give a damn about what she and the other bed wetters who claim to be on our side say… These people think that they are so important and so wise that Romney has to listen to them or all is lost for him… The bed wetters live in a town (Washington D.C) where 90% of the people that surround them are super liberals and they believe the lies that these liberals tell them and they further wet their beds…

Funny thing about this is that if you read the full quote ( two posts a above) it sounds like something you might hear at a Tea Party rally; real change comes from the votes and voices of the American people, not from the insular, inside-the-Beltway elite.

And, whether or not you agree with what he did, he does claim that things have been changed. He just, election year-style, to give the masses their due and maybe motivate them a little.

Do you really believe that Obama mobilized the American people for favor of Obamacare? This destructive law passed against the will of the people in the dark of the night by hook and crook… Obamacare was the ugliest of the ugly about Washington D.C Inside Politics and not caring about the will of the people… And yes they did mobilize the majority of the American people against it and hence the historic Republican victory in 2010 in the House of Representatives…

As I said before the full quote is even more stupid than the partial quote…

You didn’t post the full quote.
But you do get credit for at least getting past the first few lines.
And at least you did regurgitate
“………I actually believe in redistribution……….”
or
“……..You didn’t build that………..”

Fuller quote:“The most important lesson I’ve learned is that you can’t change Washington from the inside. You can only change it from the outside. That’s how I got elected. That’s how the big accomplishments like health care got done — because we mobilized the American people to speak out. That’s how we were able to cut middle-class taxes. So, something I’d really like to be able to concentrate on in my second term is being in a much more constant conversation with the American people, so that they can put pressure on Congress to move some of these issues forward.”

Any chance you guys have any actual quotes truthfully contextualized that you wanna try?
Nah…didn’t think so.